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I completely agree with everybody on Keithgriff, I can't stand that character. I actually love Ayesha because she's pretty much the opposite of my usual preferred heroine. She's the uber-feminine type of character who is never seen as heroic in games. And yet she does what she has to do to save her sister. I think that's really neat. I do hate how she interacts with Keithgriff... and yet, in some ways that's realistic. I've known a lot of women and girls who don't like to stand up to men like him, as much as I really wish they would. That you can have trouble being assertive yet still be a hero is a pretty good message for young girls. Stupid (partial failure state) pie-baking ending aside.

A lot of the terribleness around Keith comes from their lipservice to how the world was falling into ruin, but not actually wanting to commit to it for fear of spoiling the light fluffiness of Atelier in general. So you've got all this "alchemy is great," "everybody's so lively and doing their bestest," "every possible kind of climate is within walking distance of our town," and "our town has infinite apples!" with the only actual nod towards the doom and gloom is maybe slightly more ruins than other fantasy games. But fantasy games are already populated by 90% ruins to begin with.

And then there's Keith.

Everyone: "Alchemy's so awesome!"
Keith: "No, it's actually very bad."
E: "Why?"
K: "Wars. You can't hug children with alchemy arms! And nobody's thinking about the consequences!"
E: "You mean like all these miraculous devices that have been functioning for the last thousand years, creating a utopia for mankind in uninhabitable regions?"
K: "Exactly! They never thought about what might happen if they went unmaintained for 950 years, and now look! Unintended consequences!"
E: "Okay, so what'll it take to fix things?"
K: "A handful of things from the surrounding area. Maybe a month or two of effort from one person and a handful of bodyguards."
E: "What's keeping you from doing it?"
K: "The lack of fucks I have to give, that's what."
E: "Yay alchemy! But we must also respect alchemy's power to make sure future people won't have to endure our same arduous couple months of work."

Everything would be so much better if literally anybody would ever stand up to his complete crap. Instead, he lives on an unassailable pedestal of always being super right about everything, despite his insufferable BS being somewhere between superficial nonsense and lipservice.

Truthfully I think this is only the case if you thought Keith would just let the world die. I think this has less to do about Keith being an ass, and more about Keith's teaching methods... which I agree aren't ideal. Basically when anyone wants to learn from him, he gives them a premise and a result and then 'go study'... and that's about it. Trick is Keith's shown to be completely fine with doing things on his own, he's just demonstrably cynical of everyone else.

I mean, he doesn't let Nio die... if Ayesha fails, he just shows up with Nio at game end and goes 'maybe alchemy isn't your thing', and leaves. If the Shallies didn't actually fix the issue with the water, something tells me Keith and Ayesha would've just gone and done it themselves with a little help. Keith is okay about giving people time to do it themselves, but he gets shit done if someone's taking too long. He's a terrible teacher, but he's not a monster.

Spoilering this because it does have some vague Shallie end game stuff.

Keith's background and reasoning is VERY clear if you pay attention. The guy is a genius and from a well off family, and basically let it go because he learned what people did with alchemy in the previous civilization. It not only made him give up everything to study the past and become a bit of a fugitive, but it made him extremely hesitant about teaching ANYONE about alchemy. When you hold the knowledge of what destroyed the previous civilization and is slowly killing the current one, you'd probably be cynical about teaching it to the world anew as well.

Map environment looks rather dull as well as the combat system in general... Think this is a wait and get more context sort of thing but still looks rather pretty (character design wise)

Had a chance to look at this now. I'm guessing this is one of the first dungeons of the game, so I'm not gonna hold to this being the best look or the final look. There's absolutely no voicework in it at all, just the limited sound effects and really loud BGM, and having the group fighting water puppets is about the most boring thing they could fight other than rats. As a proof of concept it works, but the footage being so raw almost hurts the product, and might give people the wrong idea about what to expect.

I will say that for a game about magical girls, it needs more flair. I mean the dungeons and combat are taken whole hog from the Atelier series, so what you have is an Atelier game where the alchemy is replaced with a social link system, which will put attention to the dungeons and combat even more. Basically I like the concept, but it's not separated itself from Atelier much at all, and reusing this much for a brand new series feels like Gust is cheating here. This feels almost like a full conversion mod of an Atelier game than a new property, and that concerns me.

Is this a spoiler? It's not really a spoiler... but these games are all about finding out little things about people so maybe it is a spoiler??? I'll spoil tag it just in case. It's minor.

I'm playing Sophie now, so this is still fresh in my mind, but Sophie mentions that Oskar gains and looses weight really easily (and quickly) for mysterious reasons.

(meta wise- I think it was the game trying to explain away why they designed his coat not fitting correctly. )

Speaking of Atelier Sophie, game always puts me in a weird zen-mode whenever I play and I constantly find myself lulled to sleep. I mean, the sleeps are nice, I guess, but I really want to make progress!
(the fact that I play I play the vita version while lying down on the couch probably doesn't help. lol)

Final thought- Oskar is a really cool dude. Going in, I thought he was gonna be an otaku-self-insert-pervert character, but he's actually pretty sweet. If a little spoiled.

So I own Firis, but I'm still working to finish Sophie along with a MOUNTAIN of other games. Man, 2017 is really awesome but exhausting so far.

Has anyone played Firis and can give the skinny on how it is? It looks like Sophie's alchemy with an overhauled combat style that takes elements from Eschatology and Shallie. It sounded like they finally got a game where alchemy and combat are both good, and I wanted this verified.

So I own Firis, but I'm still working to finish Sophie along with a MOUNTAIN of other games. Man, 2017 is really awesome but exhausting so far.

Has anyone played Firis and can give the skinny on how it is? It looks like Sophie's alchemy with an overhauled combat style that takes elements from Eschatology and Shallie. It sounded like they finally got a game where alchemy and combat are both good, and I wanted this verified.

I'm not far into it but the whole semi-open work is really growing on me fast. Alchemy is like Sophie but you try to cover patterns on the grid rather then hitting stars and you can get different patterns to show up by finding catalysts.

The combat seems exactly the same as every other Atelier game so I'm not the person to ask about that.

So I own Firis, but I'm still working to finish Sophie along with a MOUNTAIN of other games. Man, 2017 is really awesome but exhausting so far.

Has anyone played Firis and can give the skinny on how it is? It looks like Sophie's alchemy with an overhauled combat style that takes elements from Eschatology and Shallie. It sounded like they finally got a game where alchemy and combat are both good, and I wanted this verified.

It's another one I only watched played by someone else in the household, but it's almost aggressively unambitious in almost all regards, and the first one in a while where my impression of the Japanese version were bad enough to make me not even want to give it a chance. I was on the fence with Sophie, but good impressions led me to try it, and I regretted that so fucking much, as I've said above.

The standout thing that basically everybody talks about is how much of a complete fuckup the first third (half?) of the game is. They go for an open world thing, but like recent Tales games, "open world" just means that every single map is a sprawling plain that makes for a nice screenshot or two, but quickly turns into just a way to pad out the time spent wandering from point A to point B with nothing in between it. They also reinstitute the ticking clock of the Arland games, only perhaps even worse because there's very little sense of progress or direction. It's just like "Here's an open world. Your quest is to Prove Your Worth three times. You have a year. Go." And then once it's fulfilled, the game's just like "Okay, that mechanic was fucking stupid. Let's abandon it and never do anything like that ever again."

It also re-adds LP from the Arland games, which is asinine. You only get to adventure THIS much, and then you have to go call home or suffer from home sickness. The 'open world' also undermines the typically already weak story/cast because it's really easy to miss major things, or even mechanics simply because you didn't happen to wander down one specific street in the town that it already takes 4 hours of in-game time just to walk around. Firis herself is also fairly crappy even as far as bubble-headed Atelier heroines go. There is literally nothing in the game that doesn't cause her to gasp with wonder, whether it's eating a sandwich or finding a somewhat rounder than usual rock. She's about eight levels past naive or sheltered.

I also can't personally speak of the localization but I've heard a lot of very not good things (mistranslations, typos, godawful wording, etc), as has been the usual since Koei-Tecmo took over.

They also reinstitute the ticking clock of the Arland games, only perhaps even worse because there's very little sense of progress or direction. It's just like "Here's an open world. Your quest is to Prove Your Worth three times. You have a year. Go." And then once it's fulfilled, the game's just like "Okay, that mechanic was fucking stupid. Let's abandon it and never do anything like that ever again."

It also re-adds LP from the Arland games, which is asinine. You only get to adventure THIS much, and then you have to go call home or suffer from home sickness. The 'open world' also undermines the typically already weak story/cast because it's really easy to miss major things, or even mechanics simply because you didn't happen to wander down one specific street in the town that it already takes 4 hours of in-game time just to walk around. Firis herself is also fairly crappy even as far as bubble-headed Atelier heroines go. There is literally nothing in the game that doesn't cause her to gasp with wonder, whether it's eating a sandwich or finding a somewhat rounder than usual rock. She's about eight levels past naive or sheltered.

I also can't personally speak of the localization but I've heard a lot of very not good things (mistranslations, typos, godawful wording, etc), as has been the usual since Koei-Tecmo took over.

As far as I'm aware, the ticking clock has been in every Atelier game I've ever played, not just Arland.

The LP thing isn't that bad, you just have to camp in your hut or just whip up a bunch of alchemy projects; you get LP back for everything you make based on how long it takes to make.

Firis is gasping at everything because she lived her entire life in a cave. As annoying as it may be for some, there's a definite story reason for it and it's not a bad one.

I haven't noticed anything wrong with the localization but there is a pretty huge bug in some quest descriptions where they pull from the wrong entry.

As far as I'm aware, the ticking clock has been in every Atelier game I've ever played, not just Arland.

I think he's referring to the game perhaps having a time limit, which was stretched out heavily in Eschatology and removed altogether in Shallie. Sophie had no time limit either, only a calendar system. I looked it up myself, apparently Firis has a system very much like Totori, where it's almost obnoxiously open and has a time limit to get a specific set of vague tasks done. But unlike Totori, which gives you 2 more years after the first 3 if you hit the magic number, Firis just opens up and has zero time limit after.

I would guess it's for two reasons. One, it has the first year as probably a very lengthy tutorial level. And two, the sole deadline allows for there to be a 'bad end', which has been lacking in the last few games.

As far as I'm aware, the ticking clock has been in every Atelier game I've ever played, not just Arland.

I think he's referring to the game perhaps having a time limit, which was stretched out heavily in Eschatology and removed altogether in Shallie. Sophie had no time limit either, only a calendar system.

wow, I didn't know that at all! I always assumed that when they show the days ticking by that there must be a REASON for it but I see now that sometimes there's not.

I really prefer there to not be; even with people saying in the forums that they had over 100 days left after they finished Firis, I still get anxious knowing there's a time limit.

As far as I'm aware, the ticking clock has been in every Atelier game I've ever played, not just Arland.

I think he's referring to the game perhaps having a time limit, which was stretched out heavily in Eschatology and removed altogether in Shallie. Sophie had no time limit either, only a calendar system.

wow, I didn't know that at all! I always assumed that when they show the days ticking by that there must be a REASON for it but I see now that sometimes there's not.

I really prefer there to not be; even with people saying in the forums that they had over 100 days left after they finished Firis, I still get anxious knowing there's a time limit.

Gust's not the best at game design.

And yes, that's what I meant. I know Arland wasn't the first to have them in the Atelier series, but they more or less did away with them for the PS2 ones (thank god) which were the first localized, then brought them back for Arland and Dusk gradually phased them out before Shallie/Sophie got rid of them completely again. They've yet to be implemented in any kind of sane way thus far and are at complete odds with the repeatedly stated theme of "just girls having FRIENDSHIP TIME AND PIES." I don't even know what they're there for at all anymore. Obligation? Tradition?

As far as I'm aware, the ticking clock has been in every Atelier game I've ever played, not just Arland.

I think he's referring to the game perhaps having a time limit, which was stretched out heavily in Eschatology and removed altogether in Shallie. Sophie had no time limit either, only a calendar system.

wow, I didn't know that at all! I always assumed that when they show the days ticking by that there must be a REASON for it but I see now that sometimes there's not.

It's to remind you how much closer you inched to your inevitable death when you took ten days to cook 3 pies in a pot.

I never had a problem with the deadline in these games, I just think some games handled them better than others. Totori was probably the worst, not only having a very arbitrary goal and open world with no hints, but it drags you along for 5 years.. way too much time. I think both Eschatology and Ayesha were about perfect, the first for having smaller deadlines that pushed you along while giving you enough side goals to make the deadline interesting, and Ayesha having the 3 year goal manageable enough that I ended up platinuming the game in one playthrough.

Sophie seems more on the Totori end with vague obscure goals, but it does leave you open to hash the goals out as quickly as you like. I just hope there's no missable events at certain times you can't go back to later. Firis has a tutorial and a one year goal, then unleashes you to do everything at your own pace. I'm okay with both of these ideas, but can understand it not working for folks who require a bit more direction.

I never had a problem with the deadline in these games, I just think some games handled them better than others. Totori was probably the worst, not only having a very arbitrary goal and open world with no hints, but it drags you along for 5 years.. way too much time. I think both Eschatology and Ayesha were about perfect, the first for having smaller deadlines that pushed you along while giving you enough side goals to make the deadline interesting, and Ayesha having the 3 year goal manageable enough that I ended up platinuming the game in one playthrough.

Sophie seems more on the Totori end with vague obscure goals, but it does leave you open to hash the goals out as quickly as you like. I just hope there's no missable events at certain times you can't go back to later. Firis has a tutorial and a one year goal, then unleashes you to do everything at your own pace. I'm okay with both of these ideas, but can understand it not working for folks who require a bit more direction.

Sophie only has a couple of missable things, and they're all well-telegraphed. As in, you start an event and your friend says, "Hey, Sophie, come to X event tomorrow night!" Obviously, if you don't show up to x event the next night, ya miss it.

I never had a problem with the deadline in these games, I just think some games handled them better than others. Totori was probably the worst, not only having a very arbitrary goal and open world with no hints, but it drags you along for 5 years.. way too much time. I think both Eschatology and Ayesha were about perfect, the first for having smaller deadlines that pushed you along while giving you enough side goals to make the deadline interesting, and Ayesha having the 3 year goal manageable enough that I ended up platinuming the game in one playthrough.

Sophie seems more on the Totori end with vague obscure goals, but it does leave you open to hash the goals out as quickly as you like. I just hope there's no missable events at certain times you can't go back to later. Firis has a tutorial and a one year goal, then unleashes you to do everything at your own pace. I'm okay with both of these ideas, but can understand it not working for folks who require a bit more direction.

I'll second that Totori was the worst by a long shot. I didn't even make it out of the first time limit thing because I had finished everything there was to do with about 1.5 years still left before being allowed to continue to the rest of the game IIRC. So I hit the FAQs because OBVIOUSLY I had to be missing something, but no. I was just supposed to idle, grind, and make pies.

Escha/Logy was kind of similar. The amount of time they give you is ridiculous if you're putting in any effort at all and then you're just supposed to idle around. One assignment, I finished not only it, but all but one of the bonus things all in the 'leftover' time from the previous assignment. It was assuaged a little bit by the 'super' bosses you could fight wherever, so there was sort of at least a goal and challenge, but that led to a cascade failure of a bunch of other mechanics; no point in doing equipment synthesis at all for 95% of the game since the boss drops were multiple tiers better, broken-ass materials far earlier (esp golden apples from what I remember) than you were 'supposed' to get them, all challenge from regular things was out the window, and even those bosses fell off in difficulty later in the game pretty fast.

Watching some vids of early Blue Reflection gameplay, and it still looks awful. For the first real boss, the battlefield is the size of a stadium. Characters just wave in its general direction and a little flame or sword slash appears 200 feet away across the gigantic expanse of emptiness. It attacks by shooting a laser with the camera positioned over its shoulder, and the characters are so far away that you can't even tell who's being hit. When it's a character's turn, the camera starts a slow pan of/around them, but A.) It's always way too close in, and B.) the position seems to be chosen at random. More than once, it's like "Hinako's turn! Here's a shot of her right asscheek looking up from calf level slowly drifting to a closeup of her shoulder." And then the supports... a girl appears to give a character a back massage. Another one lazily serves a tennis ball the length of a football field into a monster the size of a building. Not a magical girl with a magical tennis ball. Just a tennis ball.

After making a battle mistake in Sophie, I found something out that I'm torn about, and wonder if it continues in Atelier Firis.

When I got a TPK in the game, I was returned back to town the next day. But instead of having everything in your basket lost, only a portion of it was. Part of me thinks this makes the games too easy, while another side of me thinks this is just the natural progression of Gust turning Atelier into a much more casual experience. It really does seem to be catering more to fans of games like Rune Factory and Harvest Moon than what most people would consider a standard JRPG.

It doesn't bother me, but it is a measure of the series pushing further into a direction some people don't like. *looks at ArcTangent* With most of the time constraints and now the battle loss consequences removed, there's really not a lot of penalties the game gives you anymore.

Personally I always enjoyed the time system in the ...early/middle atelier games. Felt they gave me focus and I'm sad they aren't really in the most recent games. But eh, what can ya do. By the way, LP is in Atelier Sophie too. It just... you get a ton of it, so it's actually pretty hard to get it to 0. And then , even if you do get to 0 (which I only did for a trophy,) it just makes you a little weaker.

Anyways. I played (and beat twice!) Atelier Annie for the DS this past month. My first "old" atelier game, and it was great! Really loved the goofy cast, and Annie herself was a lot of fun. I liked how she started out not that INTO it and was kinda lazy/greedy. The time deadlines were really easy to hit for the most part too. I was a little worried that an "older" atelier game wouldn't be as addictive as the newer one's I've played, but nope! Still had that addictive, I MUST ALCHEMIZE ALL THE THINGS quality ^^ .

My only complaint is that the requirements for most of the endings are kinda crazy, so even though I beat the game twice, I got the same "Royal Alchemist" ending both of those times. Which, don't get me wrong, is a good and story appropriate ending, but... you know, I would've liked to have seen some others too. Eh well.

After making a battle mistake in Sophie, I found something out that I'm torn about, and wonder if it continues in Atelier Firis.

When I got a TPK in the game, I was returned back to town the next day. But instead of having everything in your basket lost, only a portion of it was. Part of me thinks this makes the games too easy, while another side of me thinks this is just the natural progression of Gust turning Atelier into a much more casual experience. It really does seem to be catering more to fans of games like Rune Factory and Harvest Moon than what most people would consider a standard JRPG.

It doesn't bother me, but it is a measure of the series pushing further into a direction some people don't like. *looks at ArcTangent* With most of the time constraints and now the battle loss consequences removed, there's really not a lot of penalties the game gives you anymore.

The true Harvest Moon experience is a desperate struggle to wring profit out of every possible second of every possible day while also dropping enough detritus picked up off the streets onto whoever the most cost efficient male/female donor/receptacle to have a whirlwind marriage within the first three months of meeting them.

And a game lasts 2.5 years. Any more than that is cheating.

That's the Proper Way™.

---

More seriously, there's waaaaaaaaay too many fluff cutscenes and pulling away from playing the actual game to be catering to the same crowd. You could probably watch every HM/RF cutscene back to back, in as much time as any given PS3+ era Atelier game spends panning around Generic Town to a sappy pop insert song.

Koei Tecmo, Gust, and NHN PlayArt have announced Atelier Online: Alchemists of Braceir, an online RPG due out for iOS and Android in Japan this winter.

The game will see players travel together on a variety of fields with dynamic weather, gather and synthesize a wealth of items, use items and skills to cooperate in battle, and freely customize their costume and skills to match their play style.

The eyes, they roll.

The real twist of the knife is that they had Jess from Mana Khemia prominently displayed on the stage as they announced... that.

There are some clips of it around the 25 minute mark. It's... a mobile game.

Yeah, I'm still trying to get through Atelier Sophie sometime this year... that's not because I'm not interested in playing it, but that this year was kinda top tier for quality video games. I have gotten back to it in the last few days, and I'm remembering why I kinda stopped. Nothing bad, but the Atelier games hit my 'one more turn' OCD side hard, and I play them for way longer than I should ever be doing.

Atelier games invoke my 'sleep is for the weak' personality, and that becomes a problem sometimes.